


An Idiotic Theory

by FriendlyNeighborhoodFangirls



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Animals, Because it's ridiculous, Did I mention this was ridiculous, Established Relationship, Fluff, Humor, Idiots in Love, M/M, Magic ones, Mice and cats and pigeons oh my!, Poison, Shenanigans, Stephen Strange is Actually the Greatest, Stephen Strange is a Trouble Magnet, Stephen just wanted to go to the library and read a good fantasy novel okay, Tony Stark Does What He Wants, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Unfortunate magical situations, With just a smidgen of, Wong is a Good Bro (Marvel), for once in my life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:33:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23307610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FriendlyNeighborhoodFangirls/pseuds/FriendlyNeighborhoodFangirls
Summary: His wizard has been cursed, again, and Tony's already used up his luck for the day.(Stephen says it's not a curse. He says Tony's whole daily-allotted karma-based luck theory has minimal merit, citing the fact that Tony had come up with it while he was drunk.)Tony really should have saved his miracle.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Stephen Strange, Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Stephen Strange & Wong, Tony Stark & Wong, Tony Stark/Stephen Strange
Comments: 30
Kudos: 260





	An Idiotic Theory

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [【授翻】一个愚蠢的理论（An Idiotic Theory）](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24838354) by [Jeffer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jeffer/pseuds/Jeffer)



> As the sun sets across the quarantined kingdom, the lone writer composes a piece...
> 
> ... and it's complete and utter tomfoolery. 100% ridiculousness. A plot formed from the basis of me wanting them to be happy and incredulous. It's just here to be what it's gonna be, and I enjoyed writing it, so I figure why not share?
> 
> Enjoy!

Stephen’s ringtone had been the Witch Doctor song (written, technically, by David Seville, though no one aside from the sorcerer himself would ever remember that) ever since the Unfortunate Incident three months ago. The Unfortunate Incident, as it had been thus dubbed, had stemmed from Peter Parker, four trumpets, half a cat, and a cauldron. It had ended much as it began, with the addition of Peter’s comment associating one Doctor Strange with a children’s jingle. 

_ ‘Oo ee oo ah ah!’  _ trilled Tony’s phone from the nightstand. Tony blinked blearily at it from his horizontal position.

“Shut up,” he told it.

_ ‘Ching chang wadawada bing bang!’  _

Tony was serious. “I’m serious.” He was also tired, and he wanted the phone to shut up. “I’m tired and I want you to shut up.” He’d been awake for a day. Possibly multiple. And it was like, four in the morning or something.

Tony blinked again, eyes focusing slowly on the illuminated screen of his smartphone. Okay, six in the morning. Still. Early as balls. He was the multibillionaire genius who’d saved the world; he didn’t have to wake up (or sleep) at any time he didn’t want to.

_ ‘Oo ee oo ah ah ching chang wadawada bing baaaaaaang!’  _ protested Stephen’s ringtone.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” Tony grumbled, even as he fumbled one of his arms out from its tangled nest of sheets and flopped it in the general direction of his phone. The nightstand was vibrating. The Witch Doctor song was blaring. It was a stupid song. Who’d written that song?

By some miracle, Tony managed to maneuver the phone to his ear. He felt a bit miffed about wasting his daily allotment of good luck on something like this. Whatever god had balanced the equation of his karma had done an annoyingly accurate job, and even Stephen was at a loss for how to tip the scales a little more in Tony’s favor (I.E. Stephen had dismissed this current cosmic theory of Tony’s as having little merit, given that Tony had been drunk its time of creation. Stephen had been drunk as well. It was a direct result of the Unfortunate Incident). 

“It’s the middle of the night,” he grunted into the phone.

“It is not the middle of the night,” Stephen told him.

“Sure it’s not,” Tony snorted, rolling over onto his back and staring up at the ceiling. “The sun hasn’t risen.”

“It’s currently rising.”

“I’m rounding down.”

_ “Okay,”  _ Stephen sighed, dropping the subject. Tony blinked at that. Stephen didn’t usually dismiss his bullshit so easily, as doing so was akin to letting Tony have the last word.

“What’s wrong?” Tony asked, sobering a little.

“Um… that’s a complicated question?” 

Tony sat up, brushing his ruffled hair out of his eyes, and the bed squeaked with his movement. “It’s actually not. Bleeding?”

“Um…”

Tony instantly threw his legs over the side of the bed. “I’m on my way.”

“I’m not bleeding. Really, I’m not,” the phone sighed. “I just, uh, scraped my elbows a little when I tripped over the cat.”

Tony paused, half upright, and his unbalanced weight sent him bouncing back onto the bed. “The what now?”

“Um…”

“What did you do this time.” Tony rubbed a hand over his face. “I thought you learned your lesson about strays.”

“Oh, the Unfortunate Incident definitely sealed that into my mind, don’t worry,” Stephen snorted. He didn’t sound particularly upset, nor did he give indication of pain, which was reassuring. He did sound distracted, though. And confused. 

Things that could confuse Stephen were either the best things to ever happen to Tony or the absolute scourge of his existence. And Tony’d already used up his luck for the day.

“Where’d the cat come from, then?” Tony probed carefully. 

There was a pause. Then, sheepishly, Stephen asked, “which one?”

Tony did stand this time, already resigning himself to a twenty-four-hour work day. He pinned the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he sorted himself a clean set of clothes. “Stephen.”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Stephen sighed. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to go outside, but they just keep coming  _ in.  _ I don’t even know where they’re coming from…”

“Where what are coming from? The cats?”

“The cats. And the birds. And the mice. And I think there’s a dog barking at the door, but it hasn’t found a way in yet.” Stephen’s voice fuzzed out for a moment, but Tony got the point.

“What did you  _ do?”  _

“I didn’t do anything!” Stephen was sounding peeved, now, and Tony thought he heard the chitter of a bird behind his voice. “I’ve been in the library all night.”

Tony raised an eyebrow. “That reassures me not at all.”

“No, like, the public library.”

“What?” Tony managed to pour himself into his T-shirt without losing any of Stephen’s words, then wriggle into his socks before pounding out of his room and out toward the exit of his wing of the compound. The sky was tinging with orange from both East and West: the sun, and the glow of New York.

“That’s what I said,” Stephen sighed. “You know that series Peter recommended to me? He doesn’t own the third book, and I haven’t been to a library in  _ ages. _ ”

Tony, incredulous, made a choked-off grunt of confusion as he waved FRIDAY to start up his car. It was too early for the suit, too early for any of this shit, and the arc reactor was still holed up in the workshop from where he’d been working on it even  _ earlier  _ this morning. “Are you still at the library?” he asked.

“Uh…” Stephen didn’t sound like he’d heard him.

“Hey, Sphen. Answer the question.”

“What?”

Tony rolled his eyes to the heavens. “Are you still at the library?”

“Yeah. I don’t think anyone’s noticed me yet, but it just opened. I portalled in when it was closed, but I think someone’s gonna notice all the ruckus here soon.” Tony heard another flutter of noise through the line—yeah, that was definitely a dog barking.

“Okay, what the fuck’s going on?” he demanded. He was sliding into his car, now, forgoing the formalities of starting it up or manually putting his seatbelt on (he was Tony Stark. He didn’t deign to). “Spell it out for me, alright?”

“About an hour ago, I attracted a mouse. And then another. And now, apparently, all of the common fauna of the Manhattan landscape,” Stephen huffed. “It’s unnerving, Tony.”

“Yeah, no shit. I’m on my way. Did they try to kill you?”

“Not yet. They’re actually being surprisingly non-hostile.” There was a meow, and Stephen’s voice got quieter as he pulled away from the phone and said something soothing to what Tony assumed was one of his accumulated menagerie. 

“Okay, well that’s good. What’s Wong say?”

Stephen snorted. “You think I’ve called him? It’s six in the morning. He’s asleep.”

“Unbelievable.”

Tony could  _ hear  _ Stephen smirking. He could practically feel it in his bones at this point. “Your morning was brightened by my voice, don’t try to deny it.”

“Yeah, your voice professing a fucking problem I have to deal with. Definitely  _ far  _ better than the alternative,” Tony said sarcastically. “Which is, you know,  _ not.” _

“I’m hurt.”

“Good!” Tony grumbled. “What the fuck!”

“Trust me, I know as much as—” he cut off, his voice falling into a different tone as he said, “oh, hello, yes—um, no, I sort of can’t move—no, that’s not necessary—”

The way Stephen spoke to annoying genius engineers and the way Stephen spoke to annoying strangers were subtly different, as Tony had begun to discover. He sounded like an asshole in both situations, but with strangers that came from a sort of aloof, disdainful inflection. With Tony, it was an irreverent, blunt, often insulting wit. Even if the broken phrases Stephen spoke through the line had been less obvious, Tony would have been able to tell they weren’t meant for him. 

As it was, he waited through the gibbering procession of half-conversation with a ruefully fond half-smile. He could tell when Stephen had lifted the phone back to his ear because he began to hear his breathing again (Tony knew exactly how Stephen’s breath sounded: how quiet it was, how rhythmic, how each whistled past his teeth. He wished he knew those things because of something that wasn’t the desperate, lonely, panicked memory of listening to it slowly fade to nothing as he waited with bloody hands and dwindling hope for rescue. That hadn’t been a good day).

“Good Samaritan?” Tony wondered, his grin quirking up further. 

“Good Samaritan just called animal control. I’ll call you back.”

“I’ll hurry up,” Tony replied, but the line was already dead. Sighing, Tony tossed the phone to the passengers seat and eased the car a little further past the speed limit. 

“Wadawada bing bang,” Tony sighed, and drove.

* * *

The library was cordoned off when Tony arrived, which likely wasn’t a good sign. Still, it wasn’t exactly a looming omen of the end times, either, and it certainly wasn’t problem for him. No one even questioned him as he strode behind the temporary barricade and pushed his way into the building. 

Stephen was sitting awkwardly in the center of the waiting area, managing to make even the plush lounging library sofa-chair look uncomfortable. He’d probably been relocated there. Clad in casual clothes, he also hadn’t been recognized as far as Tony could tell (even after… everything, he and his wizardry parade had managed to stay mostly under the radar). His elbows were scraped and he looked superbly irked. Otherwise, though, he seemed unharmed and pretty much normal.

What wasn’t normal—well. 

_ Exhibit A:  _ There was a bird in his hair, and another on his shoulder.  _ Exhibit B:  _ three cats balanced themselves precariously across his knees. Each was in a different state of disarray; some clean, some mangy.  _ Exhibit C:  _ a semi-circle of about a dozen mice, and another score of unidentified small rodents had wreathed around his shoes. And oh yeah,  _ exhibit D _ : as Tony opened the door, a yapping terrier came bursting in from the outside, pursued by two desperate animal control agents, to rub up against Stephen’s knee.

Stephen, somewhat awkwardly, lifted a scarred hand to pat the creature. It seemed to content the thing, stopping its yammering. There was a mix of bafflement and delight on Stephen’s face, the latter the unconscious and instinctual joy that non-hostile animals tended to give a person. 

The bird on Stephen’s head chirped, and Stephen tried to look up at it from beneath his brows. It was kind of adorable. 

And also completely whacked. They were in a  _ library.  _

“Okay, what.”

Stephen looked at him, and that quiet flicker of ease washed across his expression for a moment when he registered Tony’s presence. “Tony,” he said.

“You know this man?” one of the agents said. They were hanging behind him, as though they somehow needed Iron Man’s permission now that he was here.

“Oh yeah,” Tony said. Usually, he would have made up some ridiculous identity to pin on Stephen for the rest of the interaction (the time he’d made him play a disgraced nuclear physicist serving as Peter’s substitute teacher? Priceless.) but he was too weirded out by the situation to risk limiting Stephen that way.

Instead, he just started forward toward his wizard. He’d taken all of two steps before the accumulated menagerie suddenly snapped to attention. The beady eyes of all its members following him intently as he moved. 

“Ooooo-kay…” Tony muttered, slowing automatically. There was a definite threat in the eyes of those cats. And he was pretty sure that if a bird was physically capable of showing emotion, it would be giving him one hell of a bitchface. Each of the creatures edged nearer to Stephen. They almost formed ranks, baring tiny teeth, arching backs, lifting lips, puffing wings.

“They don’t like it when people go near him,” one of the ACs told Tony. 

“Of course they don’t,” Tony sighed.

“They let me move, though,” Stephen contributed. He stood, carefully dislodging the cats from his lap as he sidled around the crowd to stand before the engineer. The bird in his hair trilled angrily at Tony. And Tony was pretty sure a mouse had just urinated on his shoe. “And before you ask, no, I can’t make them shut up. They aren’t talking to me. They’re just… here.”

Tony nudged at one of the cats with his toe. It bit the sole of his shoe and hissed, wrapping a fluffy tail around Stephen’s ankle. Tony wasn’t sure if the movement was protective or possessive or both.

“Are you and me gonna have a problem?” Tony told the cat. 

“Tony.”

“Not your wizard,” Tony informed the menagerie, “my wizard. So, skedaddle.” 

Nothing happened. The mice stared at him with baleful eyes, and the birds settled further onto their respective perches. Stephen did blush a little, but otherwise Tony’s words had zero noticeable effect. 

“Great,” Stephen snorted. “Now that we’ve established  _ that  _ doesn’t work…” 

“Have you been cursed again? Did something backfire?” 

Stephen shrugged, eyeing the Animal Control agents before answering, “maybe. I don’t know why it would be so… delayed, though.”

“When’s the last time you tried to do magic?”

Stephen glared. “I don’t  _ try  _ to do magic, Tony.”

“Sure, Yoda. Just answer the question.”

“The last time I did magic was when I portalled here a few hours ago.” Stephen raised a hand to swipe his hair out of his eyes; the bird was pressing it against his forehead because of where it had decided to roost. “It did feel a bit… weak, I suppose, but it’d been a long day.”

“A long day getting cursed?”

“I didn’t get cursed. Pretty sure I would have noticed if I had, and curses tend to be more… malevolent than this.” Stephen gestured to the animals around him. 

“A mouse peed on my shoe,” Tony said, pointing at the offending garment. “I call that malevolent.”

“We have already established that your priorities are completely irrational,” Stephen said dismissively.

Their assembled crew of government individuals were watching the exchange with interested eyes, their heads swiveling back and forth as though following a ball across a tennis court. Tony had half a mind to compare them to the terrier who’s sharp face was following almost the same arc. 

He turned to them. “Congratulations, I am here to do your jobs. Evidence has concluded that as soon as this man vacates the premises, all animal presence will also be dismissed. I’ll be taking him with me now. You’re welcome.”

“But we have to—” 

Tony cut the man off, waving a hand. “Forget the formalities, alright? I hate paperwork.”

“Sorry, sir, it’s required that we—”

“Don’t make me declare him an Avengers level threat,” Tony sighed, rubbing his face with his hands. “I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Behind him, Stephen snickered. That was another of the expressions Tony could feel in his bones. 

“Let’s  _ go,  _ Stephen,” Tony grumbled, and stalked toward the door. 

He was harder to stop when he was in motion, and the agents didn’t try, letting him push open the library doors and hold them for the procession of fluffy animals as they trailed after Stephen. Each of them hissed at Tony as they passed. They gave him the distinct feeling that he was being tolerated, which inched his confusion into annoyance. No one but Tony Stark dictated allotted presence distances.

Still, he couldn’t quite walk beside the wizard when they extricated themselves from the library and slid away into the early Saturday morning streets. It was cool, the wind biting at patches of Tony’s exposed skin, but not uncomfortably so. Tony’s gait was awkward as he tried to keep up with Stephen (and Stephen kept tripping over himself as he tried to match Tony’s steps) and found the furry crowd forcing him back. It was pissing him off.

They were only a block from where he’d parked when Tony heard the rustle. It was a sort of rumbling  _ woosh  _ that grew on him like a distant train whistle, and he frowned as he turned to seek out its origin. 

It loomed on the horizon like the incoming apocalypse. 

“Oh shit.”

“What?” Stephen turned around, batting the songbird’s wing from his face. His eyes widened. “Oh  _ shit.” _

There was a swarm baring down on them. An enormous, opaque, impending obliteration sort of swarm. A cloud of darkness. A smokey roar of filth and feathers. A flock of pigeons, a fucking stormcloud of them, rolling in from the streets of Manhattan to wipe them from the face of the earth, and Tony was far too goddamn tired for this. 

He looked apologetically at Stephen. “I already used up my luck for the day.”

Tightly, Stephen said, “still an idiotic theory.”

“Run?”

“Run.”

And run they did. Stephen’s long strides took him over and affront of the animals as Tony sprinted beside him. Fur and wings and tails and pauses streamed out in Stephen’s wake like some sort of flea-infested bridal train, and Tony laughed. It was a bit hysterical, but so was their situation. 

“I frickin’ hate pigeons.” 

“You’ve said,” Stephen managed, taking Tony’s wrist and hauling him around the next corner when he recognized the sheen of Tony’s car—sanctuary!  
(The pigeon thing was, for once, not entirely Stephen’s fault. It was partly his fault. And Tony didn’t believe for one _instant_ that Stephen had been off-world all six times Tony had called for assistance in scraping bird shit off assorted windshields. Not for one instant. He’d be getting back at the wizard for that, someday.) 

They tumbled into the car with mere seconds to spare before the wave of pigeons broke against the corner building to their left and rolled across them in a cacophony of squawking, flapping, defecating chaos. Tony’s arms were locked against the steering wheel, his back pressed hard to the headrest, as the view through the window turned into a bird-kaleidoscope (a berdieoscope? A kaleidoscopigeon? A k-avian-idoscope?). He felt a little bit like screaming. Nightmare material, this was. Straight out of Alfred Hitchcock.

“I hate you!” he shouted at Stephen through the cooing and the flapping. “And pigeons! You’re as bad as the pigeons!”

Stephen, who was digging a mouse out of his back pocket (because of course he was) gave him a distracted, slanting grin, which told Tony instantly that the man was not listening to a word he said. 

The whirlwind outside was dying down, but only because it looked like every square inch of red on Tony’s car was completely obscured by pigeon. They were pressed together like penguins in the arctic. Except penguins didn’t shit more than they breathed. A dribble of white slid a long streak down the windshield—directly in Tony’s line of vision—and he very slowly turned a deathly glower on Stephen. 

“It’s not like I’m telling them what to do,” Stephen protested. He didn’t sound nearly repentant enough. 

“Your birds pooed on my car. Again,” Tony told him. “Grovel.”

“In your dreams. And they were Peter’s birds the first time.”

“They were absolutely fucking  _ not,”  _ Tony growled. “You’re  _ still  _ doing time for that. And this?” He gestured widely to the scene around them. “This just set you back two months.” 

“That would be a terrifying threat if you could actually manage to keep up your end of the whole ‘doing time’ thing for longer than two days.”

“Hey! I went three weeks that one time.”

Stephen raised an eyebrow, the shadow of a pigeon passing over his face. The mouse in his hand had settled in quite comfortably. “Because I was off-world and stuck in an interdimensional horse stable throughout.”

Tony huffed. “Nuance.” (It was at least part true. Stephen was 100% easier to avoid if he wasn’t around to begin with).

“Can we go? Please?” 

“Go where?” Tony raised his hands against the wheel. “How am I supposed to drive with all these goddamn—”

Something thumped on top of the car, something a lot larger than a bird, and Tony let out a short shriek. He strangled it as soon as it had emerged, but he still sensed Stephen’s snicker. 

“Shut up,” he hissed. “What is that? A moose?”

“Last I checked, the alces alces is not native to the wilds of Manhattan.”

“I hate you.”

“Mm, I know. I’m as bad as pigeons.” He gave Tony a wide, utterly irreverent grin. (Associations with that grin were almost exclusively positive.) 

More movement on the roof stopped Tony, fortunately or unfortunately, form irking Stephen’s mouse by moving closer. They both looked up, tracking the sound as it crawled across the roof and dislodged the birds. Some of them, at least (there were a lot of birds). Something scarlet curled over the edge of Tony’s window, and he tensed, a hand twitching toward his watch and the nanotech it contained. 

And Peter Parker’s face appeared in the window.

“Hey guys!” 

Tony relaxed explosively. Oxymoronically. “Peter! What the hell!”

“Sorta wondering that myself,” the boy chirped, sounding too much like the songbirds that had been far too acquainted with Stephen. His voice was slightly muffled through the sealed car. “What’s with all the pigeons?”

“Devil birds. They know Stephen’s sins. They’re here to make him atone.”

“Oof,” Peter said sympathetically. 

Tony got to the point. “What are you doing here? It’s the middle of the night!”

“It’s like… not. At all.”

“Thank you,” Stephen grumbled from the corner.

“And I followed the pigeons,” Peter continued. “They were pretty obvious when they were all flying, and I was already here, so I figured why not? It’s fun to swing with birds. But then I saw them all accost your car and now I’m confused.”

“Join the club.”

“What about these cats and stuff? Can we keep them?”

“They’re keeping us, apparently,” Tony sighed. “Stephen’s been cursed.”

Peter’s face slipped from that happy puppy look (Tony really had to stop comparing things to animals until they figured this out) into the cautious raptor look. It was a lowering of his brows, a slanting of his lips, a shifting of his shoulders, and a cocking of his head that all compounded—even when he was upside-down—to shift his demeanor most substantially. “What? Is he okay? How do we un-curse him?”

“It’s not a curse, I’m fine, and until we get to the Sanctum and find out, I have no idea,” Stephen replied. The mouse sat up on its haunches and blinked at Peter, who blinked back at it owlishly. 

“Mouse,” he observed, lifting one hand to point.

“Yes, very good,” Stephen snorted. “Tomorrow we’ll teach you ‘cow’.”

“The animals like him,” Tony explained flatly, fingers drumming across the steering wheel as he watched pigeon feces gather in dribbles in the grooves of his windshield wipers. 

“Wicked.”

_“Not_ wicked _,_ _very inconvenient.”_

“Well yeah, obviously,” Peter said. He knocked twice on the glass of the car door. “But he’s like Dr. Dolittle or something. That’s cool.”

Tony sighed. “He can’t talk to them, for one thing, and if anybody’s Dr. Dolittle here, it’s me. Now, would you get off my car? Maybe shoo a few birds while you’re at it?”

Peter cocked his head. “Aren’t we going to the Sanctum? Can you let me in?”  
“Absolutely not,” Tony said. 

Stephen elaborated, “if you break the seal, the birds will come in along with you. They want to be in closer proximity to me.”

“And they don’t want anyone else to be,” Tony added. 

“Oh.” Peter blinked.  _ “Oh,  _ okay, yeah. I’ll meet you at the Sanctum then.”

Tony nodded, starting the car with a flick of his wrist and watching his spider-boy backflip over the nearest rooftop in the direction of Greenwich Village. He hoped the kid got there before them. That way  _ he’d  _ be the one to wake up Wong.

* * *

“You’ve been poisoned,” Wong said matter-of-factly. 

Wong had this way of existing in Tony’s presence that no one else had quite been able to perfect over all of Tony’s forty-something years of life. There was a kid in high school who had come close, for about a month and a half stretch, but otherwise Wong was the soul practitioner of this technique. Wong had been at it for almost a year and a half now. 

The way that Wong existed in Tony’s presence was by pretending Tony was not, in fact, there at all. 

(But only when it was convenient for him. Tony had tried to get away with the old gopher-in-the-teapot trick, and of course  _ then  _ Wong had been all for Stephen kicking Tony’s ass.)

“He’s been  _ what?”  _ Tony demanded, already half on his feet.

Wong ignored him. “It’s a toxin you’ve probably been building up to noticeable levels for some time.”

Stephen, who was starting to look generally shaken by the scenario (the car ride probably hadn’t helped), looked down at the mice that had gathered around his feet once again and snorted. “Does it make me smell like catnip or something?”

“I don’t think pigeons are attracted to catnip,” Peter contributed. “I think that’s… just cats.” 

Everyone turned flat stares on him, and Peter shrugged irreverently. The boy was currently sitting like a gargoyle on the mantelpiece. It was his favorite spot; Stephen had cleared him a space so he didn’t accidentally break anything ancient and magical and possibly cursed. 

(Peter had done that once. It was a significant factor in the snowballing events that later dubbed the Unfortunate Incident). 

“It has nothing to do with physicality,” Wong clarified. “I’m surprised you cannot sense it in your own energy. It’s how I know, and it certainly justifies the… birds.”

“Devil spawn,” Tony grumbled, and was ignored. 

“What can’t I sense?” Stephen said, his small frown deepening as his eyes flickered up and to the left. (There were two possible justifications for that: one, Stephen was turning his mystic-perception, third-eye, clairvoyance bullshit internally for once, or two, Tony had just said anything factually incorrect and Stephen needed to call on the great gods of dumbfuckery to give him patience. Since Stephen “Warnings Come After the Spells” Strange was a favored child of the great gods of dumbfuckery, that usually worked out for him.) 

“Your human signature has been shifted,” Wong told Stephen, sitting back and rocking the front legs of his chair up off the ground (no wonder all the furniture in the Sanctum was so shitty). “It’s been altered by the poison to exude an energy that energizes the auras of secondary species; non-human, non-insect, non-arachnid.”

“So I’m doubly immune,” Peter said happily. 

Tony was in the habit of immediately believing everything Wong said by this point, but he was not in the habit of lacking incredulity at everything Wong said. “So Stephen’s bloodstream is now flooded with something and he’s become, what, mystic animal chow that all these creatures find delicious?”

“Not delicious,” Stephen answered because Wong probably wouldn’t, “just energizing. I don’t taste good, my aura is just in tune with the same energy they associate with continued existence.” 

(Tony begged to differ about that middle bit, but he couldn’t exactly comment on it. He wasn’t supposed to be doing any tasting while he was making Stephen do time.)

Something slammed itself into the window of the Sanctum, and all four of them jumped. Peter fell off the mantelpiece and blinked up at cat sitting angrily on the outer sill, pawing at the surface it had failed to break. It meowed, and Tony glared at it. It meowed again, louder. 

“Why do you always do this,” Wong muttered, shaking his head as he pushed away from the table. 

“Yeah, for once can  _ you  _ be the one to build up noticeable levels of an alternate-dimensional poison?” Stephen grumbled.

“Hey, I get possessed far more often than you,” Wong rumbled, “so no complaining.”

Tony snorted. “And at least this curse doesn’t make you—”

“Let’s not talk about that, shall we?” Stephen interrupted hurriedly. One of the mice had clambered onto his pant leg, and he kept carefully shaking it off. “And it’s not a curse.”

Tony waved a hand. “Same difference.” 

“Not at all.”

“Give me one reason.”

“One has an antidote, the other you have to break or counter,” Stephen sighed. He looked to Wong. “At least, I really hope one has an antidote.”

“If it does, I know where to find it.” Wong looked stony. Tony made a face at him, that Wong could definitely see but did not acknowledge in any way.

(Wong enjoyed Tony’s antics. They all knew it.) 

“I’ll meet you in the library,” Stephen agreed.

“No,” Wong and Tony said simultaneously. 

“What? Why the hell not? We both know I’m far faster at research than you.”

“True as that may be,” Wong conceded, “I don’t want  _ that—”  _ he pointed at the mouse that had made it up to Stephen’s knee and was happily twitching its whiskers at him from its perch— “anywhere near the ancient tomes. No filth in the library.”

(It was a sentiment Wong expressed often. Tony was still sore that he was considered filth by the man’s standards). 

Wong continued, “and the library isn’t exactly airtight. You would attract more than just mice, and it would cause detriment to you, the books, the Sanctum, and probably myself, if I got in the way.”

Stephen looked helplessly down at the mouse. He tried to shoo it away with a shaking hand, but the mouse just clambered onto his palm and squeaked. The others, at his feet, looked jealous. The cat at the window meowed, then whisked out of view. Tony was almost certain it had gone to seek out an alternate way in. And if the cat could get in…

“Yeah, uh, Doctor Strange, I think—” Peter began. He didn’t get to finish before a flurry of soot burst out of the fireplace and turned into a raccerous crow before any of them could realize. It dive-bombed directly onto Stephen’s shoulder.

Tony jumped. “That thing actually has a chimney? Who has goddamn chimneys anymore?” He shoved himself to his feet, moving over toward Stephen—

And was immediately hissed at by a half-dozen rodents and a cinder-covered bird. 

It was only noon and Tony was already  _ too tired for this.  _

“Oh, fuck you too,” Tony snapped at the creatures. “Stephen, Wong’s right, much as I am  _ loath  _ to admit it. We need to keep you moving. Throw off your entourage, as I already used up my luck for today so it’s likely to get worse.”

“Nothing to do with luck…” Stephen grumbled lowly. 

Peter looked a bit excited. “Does it work on snakes? If we took him to the rainforest or something would all the venomous stuff let him through?”

“Probably,” Stephen said. He sounded like he didn’t know if he should be amused or irritated, which Tony supposed was valid. Wong had just told him, indirectly, that he was useless as a Master until he’d been cured—wouldn’t even let him into the library. But on the other hand, how fucking badass would it be to have a wild tiger cozy up to you?

Peter was still musing. “I wonder if it would work on Loki if he turned into one of his other forms. Maybe it would work on him anyway—he is non-human…” 

Tony heard the flapping of wings against the inside of the chimney again and paled. “Yeah, your friendly Asgardian’s going to have to wait,” Tony said, clapping his hands. “Time to go.”

Stephen got up as quickly as he could, dropping the tenacious mouse back to the floor and dislodging the crow from its perch. He fled behind Tony, and Peter raced after them, waving goodbye to Wong on the way. 

As Tony ducked sideways toward the hall that would take him to the Sanctum’s translocation doors, he thought he heard Wong sigh.

“Why does Strange always get the fun ones?”

* * *

It was a good idea, for the first half an hour. For the first half an hour, they settled across the ocean-slick stone, completely bare of plant and animal life. Tony didn’t find the black-edged rock too uncomfortable, especially when he found a flat spot. Peter’s eyes were so wide Tony could see the horizon reflected in them. 

(The kid loved the sea. Tony remembered the first time he’d taken him to the Gulf of Mexico and Peter had just stood at the end of the dock for an hour and a half straight. Tony had near panicked when he realized there’d been tears streaming down the boy’s face almost the whole time. But Peter just told him it was beautiful.)

(Stephen liked the sea, too. He’d shown Peter how to find the right depth for sand dollars.)

Tony watched Stephen curl around himself as far from the edges of the rock as he could, hands tucked into his robes. It was the middle of the night in New York by now—almost twelve hours of near-constant portaling didn’t help their tremble, Tony knew. But they hadn’t run into anything too intense just yet. This was the first few minutes of peace they’d managed to secure. 

The water was cold, and Tony felt himself shiver. He looked around, making sure he couldn’t spot something as inconvenient as a seagull, and crawled over to where Stephen was lingering. 

Nothing hissed at him when he pressed up against Stephen, the spray soaking gradually through both of them. It was heavenly. 

“Get some sleep,” Tony provided. “Both of you. I’ll wake you up if mother nature decides to throw us another curve ball.”

They got half an hour, and then it did.

Apparently Stephen did work on sharks.

* * *

Stephen worked on penguins, too.

(Galapagos ones. Under no circumstances was Tony setting foot in Antarctica.)

(Not again.)

* * *

“It’s a shame you’re still doing time, or this whole hummingbird thing would be pretty romantic.”

“Ew, Mr. Stark, I’m still here.”

“And those are birds of paradise, Tony. Not hummingbirds.”

* * *

(Really, the whole thing wasn’t Tony’s fault. The mugs all looked the exact goddamn same, and he’d been awake all night, you really couldn’t blame him.)

They arrived back in the Sanctum in a whirl of exhaustion and irritation, soaked and coated with crud from every corner of the globe (except for Antarctica of course.) Stephen’s eyes were glinting, and he’d fully passed through his bitchiness phase of tiredness and into his soft, squishy phase, which was doing  _ a number  _ on Tony’s self control. 

Peter had disengaged from the world and flopped onto a Sanctum chair the moment they stumbled into the foyer. Tony was going to answer to May for all that elephant shit, that was almost certain, but the boy had had the night of his life so Tony was having a hard time regretting it. Plus, if Peter was sleeping, it meant he was actually staying  _ still  _ for once in his life. 

Tony towed Stephen toward the kitchen and away from any windows or doors or detrimental openings in the Sanctum’s walls, yawning widely. “We should do portal through the atlas again,” he said when they no longer had to whisper for fear of disturbing Peter, “except when you aren’t cursed.”

“Not a curse,” Stephen said. He smiled at Tony.

(Phase-two-tired Stephen had a smile like the cream skimmed off the top of unpasteurized milk. Thick and sweet and uncaring, with just the barest hint of his characteristic wit beneath.) 

“You need to not do that,” Tony told him sternly.

Stephen just smiled wider. 

When they got to the kitchen, they found it already occupied. Wong was stirring something in one of the Sanctum’s characteristic mugs. (Tony was pretty sure some uncreative past Master had made all those mugs, because there was no way any set of natural dishware could be that utterly identical).

“Oh good,” he said to Stephen. “You’re back.”

“Good morning to you, too,” Tony grumped. Wong didn’t acknowledge him, but Tony thought he saw a flicker of a smirk on the librarian’s face when he looked back at his concoction. 

Stupid wizards. Wong was the fucking worst.

“I found it,” Wong provided, jerking his chin at the mug between his hands. “There isn’t very much, but I’m steeping it now.”

Wong was the fucking best. 

“Thank the Vishanti. I think I’ve had my fill of friendly birds for the night,” Stephen huffed. He slid onto a rickety wooden stool, looked a bit nervous, then relaxed when the thing didn’t crumple at its joints.

(That had happened twice: once in the relic room, and once in the kitchen. Hilarious both times.) 

“You’ll miss them before you know it,” Tony told him, skirting behind Wong to fumble for two other mugs; caffeine was justified after all this. The bar for the justification of caffeine was located about two feet below sea level. (It used to be three feet. Tony had raised it just a bit after the Unfortunate Incident). 

“Unless they’re pigeons,” Stephen provided.

“Well,  _ that  _ goes without saying.”

Wong snorted, and Tony clunked around in the cabinets for a few more minutes before he managed to find what he needed. He was sliding to an unstable seat on a stool once removed from Stephen’s chosen roost before Wong had even finished stirring. One of the mugs was pressed into Stephen’s hands, and the contents of the other were two-thirds downed in a single tip of Tony’s head. 

“Ah,” Tony sighed, slamming it against the counter. “That’s the good stuff. Bean water trumps leaf water anyday.”

Stephen didn’t dignify that with an answer, though he did sip carefully at the provided beverage. Phase-two-tired Stephen did things with utter, wholistic concentration. 

Wong shoved the mug across the counter after a few more stirs, removing his spoon as he did. Tony noticed that it was not, in fact, a spoon, but an entire bone. It was not as surprising to Tony as it perhaps should have been. 

(One time he’d walked in on Wong and Stephen carefully fusing a human molar to the skull of a cat. He hadn’t asked. Same shit as always.) 

“This is practically a spell component in and of itself,” Wong told Stephen, tapping the bone against the edge of the mug and then tossing it unceremoniously over his shoulder and into the sink. “I won’t be replicating it anytime soon. So be grateful.”

“Sure,” Stephen said. He was still sipping at his coffee. “You’re the best.”

“Damn right I am,” Wong rumbled. 

Tony watched Wong leave and flipped him off because it was a bright new morning and Tony was always ready to set the appropriate mood. Wong ignored him utterly, dark eyes sparking with amusement, and was gone.

Tony reached for his coffee before he turned back around.

(It was a new day. Theoretically, that should mean Tony had another share of luck, and that the universe wasn’t out to fuck him over until at  _ least  _ midafternoon. Theoretically, that should mean that he wasn’t going to spontaneously burst into flame, meet the villain of the week over breakfast, say something insensitive to Stephen, shatter a company-invested prototype, or strand himself somewhere over the Hawaiian islands. Theoretically.)

(But Stephen said it was a idiotic theory anyway.)

Tony reached behind him and grabbed his mug, gulping down the last mouthful that remained. The Sanctum coffee was a quick-brew brand that Tony had forced on them since he started to spend more time here, and after that first supply, Stephen had always replenished. Sometimes your engineer just needed a good shock of chemicals. Tony went to set the mug back down—

—and then the  _ taste  _ hit him, the bitter and sour and twisted mineral taste of something that was not coffee, not at all. 

Tony looked down at the mug in his hands with something like horror. Then he looked to Stephen, who had one hand still extended to stop him. Too late.

“Oops,” Tony said.

“Damn it—” Stephen swiped the cup from Tony’s hands, but they both knew he’d find nothing. Tony had effectively destroyed their chance at solving this, leaving not even enough dregs to wet the tip of his finger at the bottom of the mug, and  _ oh fuck Wong was going to kill him— _

Something scurried and something else flapped. Stephen’s menagerie had found him once again.

“Shit shit shit!” Tony yelped, clamoring to his feet. He’d just drank the goddamn bone juice. It was one thing for  _ Stephen  _ to have to drink the bone juice, that was part of his job description, but Tony was  _ extra not okay with this. _

Extra not okay with fucking this up and leaving Stephen to suffer through another week of sleepless, animal-dodging excursions until they managed to brew another of these—

Stephen looked Tony directly in the eye and said, “This isn’t going to work.”

“What are you—”

Tony didn’t finish that question, because Stephen was kissing him, and that had the express result of shutting him up pretty much completely. 

(Stephen always kissed him like it was the start of a quest, the first step of an adventure.)

Stephen was, technically, breaking his time. He still had four days left before he was allowed to do this, and Tony hadn’t even decided if he was going to add anything on for the pigeon incident the day before. Given that they both collectively gave a total of zero fucks, Stephen had not once, in the history of Tony’s little experiment, made it through the whole of his time.

(Stephen always kissed him like Tony was about to spread wings.)

Tony was aware he probably tasted like shit, given that he’d just downed Wong’s careful collection of magic and dust and old gore. Though he supposed that was what Stephen was relying on. It wouldn’t work, of course, but it was a good strategy, to kiss the half-formed magic off Tony’s lips. 

(Stephen always kissed him like he was sewing dawn and dusk together with his bare hands.) 

Stephen pulled back after entirely not long enough. He just stood there, a hair's breadth from Tony, and waited. Listened.

The wing beats had faded. The scurrying echos were nonexistent. The paw steps were gone, the  _ ticking  _ of claws against hardwood had disappeared, and what might have been the swipe of fur and feathers through cool air was nothing but the New York wind picking up slightly across the eaves. 

“Well then,” Tony breathed, because he knew Stephen could feel it. 

“I didn’t expect that to work.”

Tony smirked, watching Stephen’s eyes flicker down to watch. “I guess that’s my lucky miracle for today.”

Stephen snorted. “It’s an idiotic theory. I’m my own damn miracle.”

He kissed Tony again.

* * *

It turned out Peter had bought the third book of that fantasy series he’d recommended, because they hadn’t had it at the library, and was more than happy to lend it to Stephen. Stephen read it to them aloud over Thai takeout and Reese's peanut butter cups one night. Tony enjoyed it (though the electromagnetic descriptions were dreadfully inaccurate. Yes, yes, willing suspension of disbelief, whatever.)

Peter wanted to call the whole poison thing the Unfortunate Incident 2.0. Tony didn’t think they should tempt fate with the insinuation that their could be a  _ series  _ of such events. He only had so much luck to just throw around tempting disaster, after all.

And besides, he didn’t think it had been all that unfortunate. 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Tony: 1  
> Pigeons: 0
> 
> Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed. :D


End file.
